The Death Star Lives!!!

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2005-11-21 05:15am

COMMENCE PRIMARY IGNITION

The new AT&T logo utterly strips my breath away. This is by far the best logo design for a major American corporation since Paul Rand's 1996 ill-fated Enron logo. Not only did the designer preserve the classic "Death Star" created by Saul Bass in the early 1980s, as well as equities from the earlier AT&T wordmark, they brought it to life in stunning 3D. I cannot help but be reminded of the DS2 in orbit of Endor, I feel as though at any minute this logo might leap from my screen and fire its superlaser to produce Calamari Fritti.

Gary Forsee, the CEO of Sprint, which recently came out with an appalling new logo design, must be going "That's no logo, that's a battlestation!"

As a brand consultant, I also cannot help but admire the "Your World. Delivered" positioning statement.

In a sense, this design actually depresses me, because I cannot deny that it is far superior to much of my own design work (which previously I thought was industry-leading). However, no time to sit around crying about it, but rather, to take inspiration from it, and try to best it!

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2005-11-21 05:18am

It's a sphere. With lines.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2005-11-21 05:29am

This is Widge, such masturbation over corporate trappings are only to be expected, BCG...

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2005-11-21 05:34am

Oh of course. I am just blown away. From my perspective, this new logo is now the ultimate power in the universe.

The Guid · Post by **The Guid** » 2005-11-21 05:52am

Look at the size of that thing!

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2005-11-21 06:09am

Two more links for those wishing to enhance their corporate wankage:

http://www.sbc.com/Common/files/sig/att ... p]vertical

http://www.sbc.com/Common/files/sig/att ... horizontal

The above images are very large, and are not yet accessible via conventional navigation due to a stupid hyperlink error on the part of some random webmaster.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-11-21 08:01am

Wait a minute, do you mean THE Saul Bass designed the 1980 logo for AT&T?

And I personally liked the old logo a hell of a lot more...

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2005-11-21 08:09am

Yes, it was the Saul Bass who created that logo. The same one who did the classic film posters in the 1950s for titles such as Vertigo and Anatomy Of A Murder. He was rather good. One colleague of mine in the industry actually worked at his studio in the early 1980s at the time of the creation of the original AT&T Death Star.

Basically, the core creative credit for the new AT&T logo goes to Saul Bass, as the key visual idea is still his. What this redesign amounts to is a new interpretation and modernization of his original idea, and in my opinion, it is rather brilliant.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-11-21 08:18am

Well, he also did a lot of animation and title sequences for films such as Vertigo, Psycho, and North by Northwest...

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2005-11-21 08:34am

Yes quite. He was rather talented. He also created the classic Bell System logo, the United "U" logo and the rather garish 1970s liveries for United, Continental and Frontier Airlines. Ultimately his 1970s corporate identity work did not age well; viewed today it strikes one as hideously dated, and his clients in the 1970s have required constant attention from corporate identity consultants since. The United U has lasted, but the livery has had to be revised twice, and much of his other CI work from the period is gone altogether.

His graphics design work for the Bell System remains a notable exception. The Bell logo remains in varying degrees of use across the former Bell System to this day, Verizon uses it on their payphones, BellSouth still uses it as part of their corporate identity, and so on. His AT&T logo was a true classic, but unfortunately that brand identity was tarnished by two decades of mediocre (if not abysmal) performance from the post-divestiture AT&T. The new logo signifies the relaunch of the AT&T brand, and helps to purge it of the negative equities it has acquired after what amount to 20 years of commercial disaster.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-11-21 08:43am

Meh, I still like the old one better.

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2005-11-21 09:01am

Nostalgia is understandable. However, at the very least, I'm sure we can all agree that the new logo is better than SBC's horrific logotype, which, were it not for the wise decision to retain and modernize the AT&T brand, would have replaced the AT&T logo.

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2005-11-21 11:33am

RThurmont wrote:As a brand consultant, I also cannot help but admire the "Your World. Delivered" positioning statement.

Juxtaposed with the new Death Star logo, I can't help reading that statement as "Your World = Fucked!"

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2005-11-21 04:24pm

or more subtly, delivered placed in quotation marks...

"Your World. 'Delivered.'"

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-11-21 04:29pm

Your World. In Order.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-11-21 05:17pm

Bah, I still like the old Death Star better, but this is certainly better than the old SBC one. I'm not a big fan of the lower-case type, either.

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